A few of the long list of highlights that Sidney (thestandingroom.com) Chen reported, having participated in the performance of Terry Riley‘s In C at Carnegie Hall on April 24:
Feeling the pulse emerge from Evan Ziporyn‘s bass clarinet before consciously hearing it …
Looking upstage and seeing Adam Sliwinski from So Percussion clapping the pulse, and realizing that the clapping I was hearing wasn’t from the monitors but from the audience …
The almost shocking sense of portent in figure 21 …
The instrumental ensemble receding in figure 22 to reveal the canon already underway between the adult singers stage right and the children’s choir stage left (and then feeling Trevor Dunn come in under that!) …
The bass frequency leviathans surfacing in figure 29 …
The moment when the pulse was taken over by the accordion …
David Harrington‘s limpid melody in figure 35, softly dancing above the pulsation, and all the raucous individual voices that followed his lead …
So many overtones! …
The sudden appearance of a banjo in the texture, and knowing that it’s from Dan Zanes directly upstage …
Morton Subotnick playing a clarinet (instead of a Buchla Box) …
The stillness of figure 48, everyone recharging for the final push …
Dave Douglas‘s augmentation of the rhythm in figure 52 or 53, soaring above a massive crescendo …
The beautiful, resonant silence that followed, which was all the indication we needed to know that people had been with us the whole way.